The Knesset Intelligence Subcommittee at press time on Monday was moving toward approving the Shin Bets surveillance of coronavirus infected citizens.

Even as they approved most of the surveillance program, Chairman Gabi Ashkenazi (Blue and White) and MK Eli Avidar (Yisrael Beytenu) pushed hard to inject limits and continuous oversight on the Israel Security Agencys use of technological surveillance.

In multiple instances where the government might have wanted broader and vague language regarding the surveillance program, the committee members insisted on a more explicit list of what the agency could and could not do with the new surveillance powers.

However, Frankel Shor recommended approval of the program, subject to limitations and continuous oversight in light of the overarching goal of saving lives and the unique dire nation of the situation.

A major controversial point was when Ashkenazi lashed out at Defense Minister Naftali Bennett and media reports that Bennett wanted to give NSO Group a role in the surveillance or storing of surveillance information of Israeli citizens.

Ashkenazi called this intolerable and demanded to know from government officials if the reports regarding NSO were true and something was in the works.

The answers from government officials were mixed.

A lawyer for the Shin Bet said that they had heard very general preliminary information about this idea, but that it was a defense ministry initiative that had nothing to do with the agency.

Deputy Attorney-General Dina Zilber said that there were ongoing discussions about some kind of initiative relating to civilian companies taking part in the surveillance or storage of surveillance information, but that the issue was not yet mature enough to have reached Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit.

Essentially, government legal officials were admitting that Bennett wanted the idea considered and that they were considering it, but that the Knessets approval Monday night would not approve any such program, since the y themselves had not yet signed off on it, and might not.

During the exchange, Avidar raised his voice against the idea, implying that everyone in the room was allowing the opening of Pandoras Box and that there would be powerful officials who would later try to use the information collected by the Shin Bet in ways the Knesset did not intend.

While the hearing was mostly respectful, at one point Ashkenazi pushed for the Health Ministry to agree to limit the Shin Bet from collecting information of third persons who came into contact with an infected person for less than 15 minutes.

Over, committee member MK Moshe Yaalons (Telem) objection that the committee should not micromanage the Shin Bet, Ashkenazi said that unless an infected person came into direct physical contact with a third party, that there should be a tight leash on what kinds of people it could technologically surveil.

Referring to what information the Shin Bet can collect from infected citizens cellphones, the committee limited this to information providing: personal identification, location and details of who an individual contacted, and excluded the content of communications with others.

Further, the committee said that the Shin Bet should transfer only those limited aspects of that collected information to the Health Ministry which were imperatively necessary for saving lives.

The committee also pressed the government that the surveillance program be shut down if either the country went into lockdown or if the coronavirus began to spread so widely that Shin Bet surveillance lost its utility.

Regarding the legal basis for extending the surveillance program, the committee chose to allow it to continue based on a government approval of an extension of aspects of the already existing Shin Bet Law.

Though there might have been positives to the Knesset passing its own new law on the issue or amending the Shin Bet Law or another law, overall, the committee found that a government decision would leave a smaller long-term footprint in terms of legal changes.

Leaving a smaller legal footprint was important to the committee to make it clear that its approval of Shin Bet surveillance against ordinary Israeli citizens was limited to this incredibly unique situation and would not set any precedent for the future.

The hearing was a far cry from the earlier hearings on the issue dating back to March 19 when the committee felt that the government was trying to bulldoze it into approving a massive, amorphous and potentially dangerous expansion of Shin Bet powers to invade citizens privacy rights.